Good Talk
by Laura Schiller
Summary: Alternate ending for 9.18, "The Application Deterioration". In which Raj shows some spine and Emily shows her heart.


Good Talk

By Laura Schiller

Based on: _The Big Bang Theory_

Copyright: CBS

Raj was having the most bizarre evening of his life, and considering he was friends with Sheldon, that was saying a lot. Somehow he had gone from being the second-loneliest man in his group (Stuart being the first, which was little consolation) to having two women ask him out on the same night. While he had to admit that this was deeply gratifying on one level, it was also making his head spin – and that was not a safe state to be in while driving a car down a crowded highway after dark.

He pulled over at the nearest gas station. If he was going to do something he'd regret, he'd prefer it not to involve bodily harm or lawsuits. With one worry off his mind, he was at least free to concentrate on the other two.

"You don't understand," he said to Claire over the phone. "Emily just wants to talk to me as a friend. She says she's having a rough time right now."

"Is that what she told you, huh?" Claire drawled. "Can't you see? She's playing you!"

That shook him out of his confusion like a bucket of ice water to the face.

What was he doing? It was one thing for him to ask Penny and the girls for advice. They were like unofficial sisters-in-law, and he valued Penny's knowledge about dating even if he didn't always agree with her skeptical attitude. But for a woman he'd only met twice to suddenly pass judgment on someone she'd never met, based on no evidence except his own bewildered summary of events … that didn't feel right.

Loyalty was a concept he often struggled with. As a peace-loving man (or a spineless one, depending on whom you asked), he had often found himself torn between opposite sides in a conflict. But this time, for once, the answer became clear.

"Excuse me," he said. "You don't know Emily. I do. We were together for more than a year, and fake tears aren't her style at all. She hates showing weakness, and for her to do this after I dumped her is a huge sacrifice of her pride. The least I can do is hear her out. So … I'm sorry, Claire, but I won't be able to meet you."

There. It was out.

"Our timing sucks, doesn't it?" Claire laughed wryly. "Oh well. It was probably a bad idea anyway. Between my ex and your ex, we'd have enough baggage to get stopped at the airport. Good luck, Raj. I really hope I'm wrong."

She ended the call.

Raj rested his head on the steering wheel, prayed in English, Hindi and Klingon that he had made the right choice, and restarted the car.

/

Emily met him at the door to her apartment. She was wearing jeans and an old college sweater, she had no makeup on, and her eyes were almost as red as her hair.

"Hi," she said, smiling stiffly, holding out one hand for a handshake at the same time as he held out both arms for a hug. He turned it into a two-handed handshake at the last minute, and she ushered him inside.

"Do you still like matcha lattes?"

"You remember that? … I mean, yes, please."

He paced around the living room as she retreated behind the kitchenette counter to wrestle with her high-maintenance coffee machine. The interior decorator in him couldn't help but notice that her apartment felt different. It wasn't dirty or disorganized as such – she was one of the tidiest people he knew – but several key details were out of place. It smelled different, less like food and perfume and more like a hospital. The throw pillows on the couch were scattered randomly instead of arranged in order, the bloody skull figurine on the mantelpiece had not been dusted, several Tim Burton movie posters were missing, and ...

"What happened to your photos?"

There had been a corkboard covered in printed photos: herself, her roommate, their families and colleagues, and even one of Emily and Raj posing in formal dress at the Prom Do-Over. He wouldn't have been surprised to see that one missing, but what about the rest of them?

"Yeah. That." Emily's shoulders tensed; she kept her back to him as she poured their drinks. "That's what I wanted to talk about. I hoping to start with something neutral first, but trust you to jump right in to the most uncomfortable part."

He decided not to argue with that. "Are you and Sasha having trouble? Because my friends could totally help you with that. Sheldon could even write up a Roommate Agreement if you - "

"She moved out," said Emily, in a sharp voice that could have easily been mistaken for anger. But when she turned around with the two mugs and he saw the bleak look on her face, he knew it was just a thin disguise for hurt. "I gave her the photos to take with her."

She placed the _Doctor Who_ mugs on the coffee table (a TARDIS for him and a Dalek for herself, just like before), sat down on the opposite end of the couch from him, and bowed her head so that the side of her face was hidden from view by her long red hair.

"What happened?"

"She got a job in New York. I was happy for her, but … I didn't think it would turn out like this. We Skyped or e-mailed every day at first, but then her answers kept getting shorter, and at one point she just stopped answering. And to be honest, I didn't try as hard to keep in contact as I could have either. I … didn't expect that. I thought we were friends."

Between the lines of her understatements, he could hear how lonely she was. He knew all too well how that felt.

"That's awful," he said. "I can't even imagine … it was difficult enough for me when Howard married Bernadette and went to space, but he never cut me off like that. I'm so sorry."

"Everyone I know would tell me that it's not a big deal," she continued. "That I should make new friends, that this happens all the time, that I can't blame her since I stopped messaging her too. And I'm trying to deal with it, honestly I am, but … Raj, you're the only person I could think of who would just let me be sad."

She moved closer to him on the couch, close enough for their legs to touch. She tucked her head into that space on his shoulder that he used to believe was made by the gods just for her, and he could feel her whole body relax.

Here was something he could do, at least. He could put his arm around her, pat her on the back, and drop a kiss or two on her soft coppery hair.

"You have every right," he said, "To feel lonely. I'm the expert on loneliness, remember? But you don't need to be lonely tonight. I'm right here."

He didn't plan to do any more than comfort her as a friend. But his body had its own memory, and it did not always cooperate with the memory of his mind. They had been together for so long that certain patterns had become hard-wired, like the steps in Barry Kripke's fencing lessons, so that he moved without conscious thought. _Advance. Retreat._ It felt natural to kiss her nose, her cheek and then her lips. It felt natural for his hand to slide down her back and then up again underneath her sweater. It felt natural to test how long they could kiss without breathing, and find that it was a lot longer than they had expected.

"Hold on." To his own surprise, Raj was the one who broke away first. "Is this okay? Should I stop?"

"No! Yes. I – I don't know." She pushed him away, grabbed her coffee cup, and took a long drink as if to clear her head. "What just happened?"

"I'd call it a kiss, and an amazing one at that."

"You can't just … " She shook back her tangled hair out of her face, still out of breath and blushing. "You broke up with me! You can't just kiss me like that never happened."

"I kissed you _because_ it happened," he retorted. "Because there hasn't been a day since then that I didn't hate myself for it. Last time I tried to talk to you, you slammed the door in my face, but now I'm here, I swear to all my gods, I won't leave until you hear me out."

"So tell me why." She crossed her arms and glared at him, _en garde_. "If you regret it so much, why did you do it?"

"Because I got scared."

If they were having a fencing match, this would be the part where he offered his sword to her and hoped she wouldn't use it to run him through.

"Not scared of your horror movies, although there's that … but I've never had a relationship last as long as ours did. I've never gotten to the part that feels like work."

"You're no vacation yourself sometimes, you know."

"Believe me, I know! I wasn't sure if we could make it in the long term, especially after my parents' divorce. And then I met this girl at the comic book store who liked cartoons and other non-creepy things as much as I do, and I just … I lost my head. I built her up into this perfect woman in my imagination, but I can see now that she was as flawed as the rest of us. It wasn't fair to either of you."

"Another woman?" Emily's eyes narrowed. Raj realized afresh what a disaster he had escaped by turning down Claire's offer of a date. If Emily still got jealous of Penny sometimes, there was no knowing how she would react to him actually cheating on her. "That was your reason?"

The temptation to keep on talking, to justify himself somehow, was almost overwhelming, but he knew it would do no good. "Yes."

"Did anything happen between you and her while we were still together?"

"We talked, that's all." He might as well confess to the whole truth. "She actually called me tonight at the same time you did to ask me out on a date, but I said no. She just broke up with someone, and I don't think she's over him any more than I'm over you."

"Tonight … ?" Emily frowned. Raj could practically see her mind race as she put two and two together. Her eyes began to flash dangerously. "Is that why you kept hanging up on me? You were talking to _her_ at the same time?"

He nodded.

Her hands shot out to grab his shirt collar above his sweater vest, and her eyes locked on his. For a moment, Raj wondered if there wasn't a grain of truth in her serial killer jokes after all; he had never seen anyone look so fierce.

"Raj," she said. "I don't think we can be friends after all."

"O-kay … do you mean that in a good way or a bad way?" His heart was racing. He couldn't look away from the brown and golden flecks in her green eyes. "A little clarification would be nice here."

"I'm asking you to either come back to me, or leave." She gave him a tiny shake. "Are we still too much work, or is it worth it? Think carefully before you decide."

That was more than enough clarification for him.

"Emily, I've been thinking carefully since the last time I left this room. And let me tell you, the work of being with you really is a vacation compared to the work of being without you. Of all the women I've ever dated or had a crush on, none of them were ever real to me the way you are. You're patient with me when I say weird things, you challenge me to do things I've never done before, and you call me out on my mistakes when I deserve it … You are to me what Bernadette is to Howard, and I never want to lose you again."

He wasn't expecting a speech in return, but what he got was better: Emily pinned him down against the couch cushions and gave him a kiss more eloquent than a thousand words.

Several hours, a lot of shed clothes, and a stumbling trip to the bedroom later, Raj found himself looking at the most beautiful contrast of colors he'd ever seen: wine-red blankets, Emily's white body wrapped in his brown arms, her bright orange hair tumbling across the pillow, and her green eyes half-closed in a sleepy smile.

"Good talk," he said.


End file.
